The present invention relates to a method and a device for simulating process flows in the graphics industry and for displaying the result calculated in the simulated process flows.
Companies in the graphics industry, such as printing plants, usually have several devices, such as printing presses or machines for print finishing, such as folding machines, as well as prepress equipment, all of which will hereinafter be summed up by the term “devices of the graphics industry”. Thus, jobs have to be distributed among the different available devices of the graphics industry in order to use the available devices as efficiently as possible. In this context, not every printing job requires every resource, such as a folding machine or printing press, in the same manner so that it is a difficult undertaking to coordinate different jobs distributed among several machines. The same problems arise also when a company of the graphics industry has to decide whether it pays to increase its stock of equipment to be able to process additional orders. Since a company of the graphics industry increases its stock of equipment only if it can be sure to make extra money in this manner, printing press manufacturers are forced to make profitability analyses on the utilization of new printing presses in the course of the sales consultation. In this context, it is problematic that there is a very large number of different types of printing presses, which also differ considerably in special features. In addition, due to their size, devices of the graphics industry must also take into account the specific space conditions in a printing plant.
Today, in order to solve these complex problems, the industry also uses, for example, simulation programs on a PC or laptop, the simulations programs including components in a library which make it possible, for example, to build up a production line. The machine data which, for example in the printing industry, can be set-up times, production times, and downtimes, has to be entered into these components at any one time. However, to create a process flow, the different components have to be linked together so that changes and dependencies of different orders that are distributed among several machines are taken into account.
Such a simulation program is, for example, the software “Enterprise Dynamics” of the INCONTROL company (www.enterprisedynamics.com). Here, the user can create an industrial simulation model of many components. To be able to take into account the dependencies between the components, it is necessary to create links between the components, involving considerable effort. In doing so, case-specific constellations are created from the components of, for example, the printing presses as a function of the printing jobs. Thus, in each case, a static model is developed which needs to be completely redone in the case of a change in orders or in the stock of equipment. This method turns out to be very cost-intensive and time-consuming, as a result of which, in the graphics industry, it can only be used for large projects, such as the purchase of a larger stock of equipment of a large commercial printer.